Russia has destroyed so many Ukrainian books this summer that the industry says it is fighting to survive. Russia has burned about 13 million books in three months, and the Ukrainian Publishing Association has asked President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to convene a meeting of the National Security and Defense Council on the state and recovery of the publishing industry, association head Artem Bidenko said.
The number of books lost amounts to nearly a third of the 33.21 million copies Ukrainian publishers printed in all of 2025. The whole book market turns over about to $169–193 million a year, roughly the revenue of a single mid-sized shopping mall, so strikes have pushed a small, vulnerable sector toward collapse.
The strikes have become systematic
Russia has hit Ukraine's printing capacity repeatedly. On 23 May 2024, a Russian missile struck the Faktor-Druk printing house in Kharkiv, killing seven workers as they printed children's books at a plant that produced roughly a third of all books in Ukraine, and earlier strikes destroyed the capacity of Pobutelektrotekhnika, one of Ukraine's largest printers.
This summer, the attacks have turned systematic. Russian strikes destroyed the Konvi printing house, and another hit a Kharkiv warehouse storing products of the Ranok publisher and the KnyhoLend chain, destroying about 8 million books, including 620,000 textbooks, with damage from that single strike estimated at $24 million. Direct losses to the industry now stand at at least $29 million, which the association believes understates the real figure.
The damage runs across the whole market
The strikes have hit retailers and publishers alike. This year, Russian attacks damaged Kyiv's Pochaina book market, the Alpaka bookstore, a Knyharnia Ye store in Podil, and Ranok's Kyiv logistics, and harmed the publishers Nash Format, Laboratoria, and BookChef, among others.
The sector was already tiny. As of August 2026, the total floor space of all of Ukraine's brick-and-mortar bookstores only slightly exceeds the area of six football fields, according to the Ukrainian Book Institute, and the industry projects that total print runs may fall by 15% this year and sales by a quarter.
After a fire at the RNK-Ranok warehouses on 1 August, the institute estimated that total losses amounted to about 30% of Ukraine's annual book output.
Publishers say existing support does not reach them
The association says current mechanisms miss the industry's main asset. A war-risk compensation program in effect since 1 January 2026 covers real estate but not goods in circulation or finished products. For publishers, this means the book print runs that are among their principal assets. The program only compensates property destroyed after a firm joined the program in higher-risk areas.
The association asked for measures it says need no billions and face no legal obstacle:
- war-risk insurance extended to book stocks
- affordable loans to rebuild printing capacity
- restored state purchasing of books for libraries, suspended in 2022.
For 2026, only $627,000 was allocated to fund up to 75 books, while libraries in only about 21% of communities are refreshed annually, and Russian-language books still account for more than 40% of library holdings.
If Ukrainian publishers disappear, the association warns, foreign companies focused on commerce could take their place, ending the support for Ukrainian authors and identity that domestic publishing provides.
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